


unedited transcript fragment, 7th May 1989, folder R19/948, BBC WAC

by Lilliburlero



Category: The Charioteer - Mary Renault, The Marlows - Antonia Forest
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Minor Canonical Character(s), Racism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-23
Updated: 2015-02-23
Packaged: 2018-03-14 19:49:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3423431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilliburlero/pseuds/Lilliburlero
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'I inherited from a Fernanda Knowles who was something special at music—one sees her name in the Third Programme occasionally.'</p><p><i>The Cricket Term</i>, chapter 6</p><p>*</p><p>Advisory: mentions of slavery and racism.</p>
            </blockquote>





	unedited transcript fragment, 7th May 1989, folder R19/948, BBC WAC

...well, not so often anything overt. But always sort of _underneath_ , if you see what I mean. And after a while you start to think maybe it’s you, you’re paranoid. But at the same time you know you’re not. And the everyday cattiness doesn’t stick with you in quite the same way as other things, that aren’t meant to wound—one funny little incident, meaningless really, but I'll never forget it, it must have been when I was 15, maybe. It was the first day back, and I always felt lonely, coming from my aunt's place in Brixton, with nine of us living there all the time, and always more people coming and going, all that life, music, chatter, colour, food—to this big old pale house in Dorset, where nobody looked like me, nobody talked like me—on First Day I always cursed my Auntie June for sticking with the provisions of my parents' will and sending me to A Real-Life English Boarding School, that's how she said it, so you could hear the capital letters. I went into my dormitory and it was empty apart from a stringy little blonde girl, maybe ten years old, obviously new, all grey and clenched up with the effort of not crying. She wasn’t really my responsibility, a prefect should have been around to see to her, but I really felt for her, you know. And so I started to chat with her, and it just so happened she was the oldest girl in a big family, and even though I'm an only child, technically speaking, what with living with all my cousins during the holidays, I could sympathise with suddenly being, well, on your own. And then I asked her about her summer and she said she’d spent it on her cousin’s farm—and she described the place—and she said—she said _—there are two farmhouses—I like the old one best, but we have to stay in the new one because there are so many of us—it’s only 18th century, built by an ancestor of ours who made his pile in the slave trade—_ Just like that. Squeaky, confident, precocious little voice: I can hear it now. Completely oblivious: just parroting. I could honestly have strangled her, right there and then, but luckily a bell rang somewhere and I had an excuse to run off. And then I began to think—as I said, Mum and Dad left some money for my education, but it never would have seen me through the whole of it, so I was only at Kingscote still because of a scholarship: it was called the Prosser, quite a big deal. It financed you through whatever study or training you decided to do after school too—so it made a huge difference to my life; I pretty much owe everything to Alice Prosser—which is why I wrote the book—but I’m getting ahead of myself. Anyway, the Prosser scholarships were all funded from a massive bequest to Kingscote in 1926. And I got to wondering—where was that money from? Not Alice herself, we were all told a bit about her when the award was made, but back, further back—cotton? Sugar? Slaves? Our maths teacher would have told me to _run and find out_ but I didn’t see how I could—march up to the headmistress on one of her Visiting Days and say _hi there, am I here because people like your ancestors enslaved people like mine?_ Not done, not at a Real-Life English Boarding School. So I—well, not forgot. Just got on with things. And then, a few years later, I was—well, here, in Broadcasting House, in the canteen. I hadn't long graduated—first time I’d done anything for the BBC, and I was a bit star-struck, gawking about trying to spot famous people, and I crashed straight into a middle-aged man juggling a walking-stick and a tray—I thought I knew him from somewhere, he had that sort of vaguely pleasant, transferable face. Anyway, tea and mulligatawny soup everywhere. He was nice about it—he said it was rather a good tie for radio to start with [laughs]—and we got talking. I happened to mention something about my school, and he said—well, Kingscote, how extraordinary, and had I heard of Alice Prosser?—and of course I mentioned the scholarship. And it turned out he’d worked with the Prosser archives for three years after the war; he could probably help if I wanted to find out more—and he gave me his number. It was only when he’d gone and I looked down at the scrap of paper in my hand I realised I’d been talking to the Controller of the Third Programme—L.P. Odell—[laughs]—Laurie became a good friend—but Alice Prosser—well, she became an _obsession_.

LAWLEY: Our guest on _Desert Island Discs_ this morning is Fernanda Knowles, singer, pianist and composer. She’s just published _Alice Prosser: an exemplary life_ , a social history of pre-First World War Britain told from the perspective of an extraordinary, but forgotten figure. And your third record, Fernanda, is...

**Author's Note:**

> My contribution to [this fic challenge](http://trennels.livejournal.com/122313.html) at the Trennels community on LJ: to the theme 'former holders of the Prosser Scholarship reflect on its legacy.' 
> 
> Set Since the War, with the usual wiggle-room, but broadly on the _Cricket Term_ timeline.


End file.
